Garment retaining means for metal wire coat hangers



Nov. 17, 1959 L. s. RELLER ETAL GARMENT RETAINING MEANS FOR METAL WIRE COAT HANGERS Filed April 2, 1958 United States Patent-G GARMENT RETAINING MEANsJFoR METAL WIRE COAT HANGERS This invention relates to a device for supporting clothing and more particularly to a garment engaging holder for use on ordinary metal wire coat hangers.

Coat or garment hangers are very old. The most used type is formed from a single wire rod to form two wing portions and a centrally located top hook. This hook is adapted to detachably extend over a horizontal supporting rod, bracket, wall, nail, or like. While such hangers are successful in holding relatively heavy buttoned coats, they are not successful in holding lightweight, flimsy garments, such as dresses, blouses, formals, slips, or like. With such garments, the shoulder strap portions slide downwardly and outwardly on the arcuate bar and, having passed the outer end or ends of the bar, drop from the hanger. Furthermore, lifting the hanger and garment onto or from a horizontal closet supporting bar is most diflicult to accomplish without the garment slipping otf of the hanger. Also, in removing or replacing other adjacent loaded hangers, the garments are often accidentally removed and dropped from their respective hangers. While some effort has been made to install or form expensive holding means on the heavy type wood coat hangers, no eifort has been made to provide a simple, non-expensive holding clip for the wire metal coat hangers.

Therefore, one of the principal objects of our invention is to provide a garment retaining means for ordinary metallic wire coat hangers.

A further object of this invention is to provide a garment retaining clip for metal wire coat hangers that may be easily and quickly installed on the hanger.

A still further object of our invention is to provide a garment retainer for wire coat hangers that is of one piece.

A further object of our invention is to provide a garment securing means that may be easily and quickly adjusted to accommodate different types of garments and different widths of garments between the shoulder strap portions.

A still further object of our invention is to provide a garment fastening means that is easily and quickly actuated.

Still further objects of this invention are to provide an eflicient garment hanger that is economical in manufacture, durable in use, and refined in appearance.

These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.

Our invention consists in the construction, arrangements, and combination, of the various parts of the device, whereby the objects contemplated are attained as hereinafter more fully set forth, specifically pointed out in our claims, and illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which:

Fig. 1 is a front view of our garment hanger in use;

Fig. 2 is an enlarged perspective view of one of our clips snapped onto a wire coat hanger and ready for use;

Patented Nov. 17, 1959 2 clips, installed on a hanger, is taken on line 3-3 of Fig. l and more fully illustrates its construction; and

Fig. 4 is a side view of our device illustrating how it may have its finger end portion pivoted upwardly.

In these drawings, we have used the numeral 10 to generally designate an ordinary wire rod coat hanger having the usual top center hook 11, as shown in Fig. 1. Extending from this hook portion are the two top rod portions 12 and 13, which extend outwardly and downwardly and away from each other. It is to such a common and well known garment hanger that we install'our garment retaining means and which we will now describe in detail. We provide two of our clips, i.e., one for each of the top wing rods 12 and 13. Inasmuch as the clips are exact duplicates of each other, we will describe the 1 structure of only one, it being understood that the description will apply equally to either clip.

As before noted, our clip is of one piece and is stamped and formed from a sheet of metal. The base portion 15 is in the form of an inverted trough having two downwardly extending spaced-apart sides 16 and 17, as shown in Fig. 2. In each side 16 and 17, we form four depressions 18, 19, 20 and 2.1. These indents, lugs or depressions are. arranged in a rectangular pattern and create internal projections on the inner sides of the sides 16 and 17, as shown in Fig. 3. The two top depressions 18 and 19 are spaced apart from the two'lower depressions 20 and 2.1, as shown in Fig. 2. Extending from one end of the top 22 of the inverted trough is an arched spring finger 23. This finger extends from the' inverted trough first forwardly, then upwardly and forwardly, then forwardly, then downwardly and forwardly in a curved path. The free end of the finger has a depression 25 in its underside to conform to the transverse curvature of the coat hanger rod, as shown in Fig. 2. The entire garment retainer may be formed from a single piece of sheet metal, or it may be cast or formed from plastic or like. Inasmuch as it is necessary for both the inverted trough and the finger to have spring characteristics, the sheet metal should be selected accordingly. In most cases, the item will be spring-tempered after it is formed. If made of plastic, the plastic should have some resilient characteristics.

One of our devices is snapped onto each side wing of the coat hanger, as shown in Fig. 1. Also, if desired, the item may be snapped on the lower horizontal bar of the hanger. This is done by merely forcing the trough downwardly onto the rod of the coat hanger and past the two lower depression indents 20 and 21. The two depression indents 18 and 19 thus will extend above the coat hanger rod and the two indent depressions 20 and 21 will extend below the coat hanger rod. These indent depressions will not only aid in frictionally yieldingly holding the clip onto the coat hanger, but willhold the clip longitudinally with the rod upon which it is mounted. Also, the two sides of the inverted trough will yieldingly frictionally engage the coat hanger rod and thereby yieldingly hold the clip from rotating on the hanger rod. Our two clip retainers may be longitudinally slid on the coat hanger for adjustable positioning of the same. The garment 26 is placed on the hanger and the spring fingers are raised over and beyond or onto the garment to be held. Also, the finger end portion of the item may be pivoted upwardly as shown in Fig. 4. When this is done, the depressions 20 only are unsnapped from the hanger. To facilitate this partial unsnapping of the item, we have i made the depression indents 20 more shallow than the Fig. 3 is an enlarged cross sectional view of one of our depressions 18, 19 and 21, as shown in Fig. 3. When this pivoting system is used the garment is placed below the finger 23 and the item snapped back into place. Furthermore, with the item raised as shown in Fig. 4, it will slide easily on the hanger for position adjustment.

With the finger free of the hanger, it will not scratch paint from the hanger when the item is slid on the hanger rod.

The item is most economical to manufacture and may be quickly-snapped onto or-removed from-a wire coat hanger.

Some changes may be made in {the construction and arrangement of our garment retaining means for metal wire coat hangers without departing from the real spirit and-purpose of our invention, andit is our intention to cover by our claims, any modified forms of structure .or use-of mechanical equivalents which may be reasonably included within their scope.

We claim:

1. In combinatioma coat hanger having a round rod portion, an inverted trough portion embracing the round rod portion of said coathanger; said inverted trough portion having spring characteristics, lugs on the inner side of each of the sides of said inverted trough portion normally below the plane of the round rod portion of said hanger for yieldingly holding said inverted trough portion thereto, and an archedspring finger extending from said inverted trough portion adapted to have its free end yieldingly engaging the rod portion of said coat hanger.

2. :In combination, a coat hanger having a round rod portion, an inverted trough portion embracing the round rod portion of said coat hanger; said inverted trough portion having spring characteristics, indented depressions extending inwardly in each of the sides of said inverted trough portion normally below the plane of the round rod portion of said hanger for yieldingly holding said inverted trough portion thereto, and a spring finger extending from said inverted trough portion adapted to have its free end yieldingly engaging the rod portion of said coat hanger.

3. In combination, a coat hanger having a round rod portion, an inverted trough portion embracing the round rod portion of said coat hanger; said inverted trough portion having spring characteristics, lugs forming a rectangular pattern on the inner side of each of the sides of said inverted trough portion normally having two of the lugs below and the other two lugs above the round rod portion of said hanger for yieldingly holding said inverted trough portion onto the round ro'd portion of said hanger, and an arched spring finger extending from said inverted troughportionadapted to have its free end yieldingly engaging the rod portion of' said coat hanger.

4. In combination, a coat hanger having around rod portion, an inverted trough portion embracing the round rod portion of *saidcoat hanger;'said inverted trough portion having spring characteristics, lugs forming a rectangular pattern on the inner side of each of the sides of said inverted trough portion normally having two of the lugs below and the other two lugs above the round rod portion of said hanger foryieldingly holding said inverted trough portion ontothe round rod portion of said hanger, and an arched spring finger extending from said inverted trough portion adapted to have its free end yieldingly engaging the rod portion of the coat hanger; said lugs closest to said finger, and below the rod portion of said hanger being shallower than that of the other said-lugs.

Rferences Cited in the file of this patent .UNITED STATES PATENTS.

828,158 Weaver Aug. 7, 1906 1,059,306 Kuczynski Apr. 15, 1913 1,101,088 Olson June 23, 1914 2,165,072 -Sadowsky July 4, 1939 2,408,697 Smith Oct. 1, I946 FOREIGN PATENTS 240,493 Great Britain 0ct...14, 1926 

